Agencies Can Now Create More and Longer Twitter Lists

Twitter Lists might not be the most popular feature on the microblogging platform, but for those that use them, it’s a very efficient way to keep track of Twitter accounts that you want to pay special attention to. This week the company expanded its List feature, giving members the ability to create more lists and include more people.

In and of itself, a Twitter List is a very simple feature that allows you to group together Twitter members by whatever criteria you choose. For example, marketers might want to pay close attention to evangelists, potential customers, or partners, and Lists allow you to do that without sifting through thousands of tweets from other people.

Additionally, it’s also a good way to keep an eye on the competition. Lists enable you to see people’s tweets without having to follow them, making it a very effective, covert, competitive-intelligence gathering tool.

Previously Twitter limited you to 20 lists and each one could only include up to 500 accounts. Now you can create 1,000 lists and each of those can include up to 5,000 accounts. It’s not clear how many people were going over the allotted 20 lists, but we don’t think this update was intended for casual users. Instead, community managers for larger brands and agencies with several clients will likely benefit from the extra wiggle room.

Jennifer Beese: Jennifer Beese has worked as a community manager and social media strategist. When she’s not writing, you can find her studying anatomy and physiology—she literally has a skeleton in her closet—or under the stars with her telescope.